Eliminating Sales & Marketing Friction for a ProServ Firm
Rebuilding the operations layer between marketing and sales to deliver $30K in monthly qualified pipeline with 3 hours reduced in manual work for sales per week.
Situation
A professional services firm approached us with the following issue: “we’re hitting a ceiling we can’t explain.”
Their delivery track record was phenomenal, their pipeline was bursting, it was a team of veteran delivery consultants, and the offer was validated in the market.
The problem? Revealed through our 30-day Operational Diagnostic was this invisible gap between their marketing and sales department.
They had plenty of leads but the way they were routed to sales was messy. Sales got unqualified leads or leads who weren’t sales ready. Sales was spending most of their day doing administrative work instead of actually talking to leads and closing them. Marketing was moving on their assumptions instead of sales signals.
When we asked each team what “sales ready” meant, we were met with a myriad of answers.
Qualified opportunities slipped right on through.
Action
After the 30-day diagnostic, we engaged the client in our Embedded Execution retainer with the following roadmap of issues to untangle:
No lead scoring system: inbound leads needed to be weighted on fit and intent, and filtered to sales accordingly
No shared understanding on what “sales ready” means: get everyone on the same page for what defines a qualified vs unqualified lead, and marketing ready vs sales ready
Manual handoff loops: leads needed to move seamlessly from marketing to sales without administrative burden being placed on the team.
Underutilized tools: paying $3K per month for a tool that isn’t utilized is a big operational risk. Workflows needed to be built, sequences needed to kickoff, and the CRM needed to become an engine instead of a database where data points where aimlessly recorded.
Sales doing marketing: we needed to get everyone in their zone of genius and keep them there.
The primary operational risks we identified in the diagnostic were wasted sales capacity, inconsistent pipeline quality, and a marketing function that was talented but struggled to prove impact.
Task
We embedded directly into the team, rolled up our sleeves, and got to work. Over six months we applied the following:
Created a shared definition of “Sales Ready”, which became the foundation for everything else.
Designed and implemented a Hubspot lead scoring model to weigh inbound and outbound prospects on fit, behavior, and intent signals. The goal was to create an “at a glance” view for leadership to understand the health of the pipeline.
Eliminate manual handoffs entirely with automated workflows to trigger sales alerts the moment a lead is defined as “sales ready”.
Architect and execute automated marketing nurture flows to keep leads engaged, warm them up, and guide them from marketing ready to sales ready without requiring sales involvement.
Run structured syncs between marketing and sales to ensure messaging prospects receive at each stage of the funnel was aligned.
Working hand-in-hand with the founder to build an account-based marketing and sales strategy to channel high performers energy on high-value targets, develop deeply tailored content for those targets, and create a repeatable system for transforming intent into conversations.
Result
When you address the root cause of issues, things feel slow at first, but then compound quickly. By the end of six months:
$30,000 → $40,000 in marketing-qualified pipeline delivered every single month (this has continued since the engagement ended 9 months ago)
Sales reps reclaimed 3 hours per week previously lost to marketing tasks
The awkward tension between marketing and sales eased
The founder had visibility, trust, and confidence in the pipeline, where leads stood, what got the market to move, and when/where the system needed adjustments moving forward.